Authors: Abbie Williams
Angus turned and called, “Malcolm, would you like to join us?”
“I would!” he responded, bounding down the bank like a puppy, meeting Angus partway. Angus ruffled the boy’s hair as he was fond of doing and then continued up to me.
“Lorie, if you’d rather wait until this evening to pay a call, I understand. I shall dig out the hooks and line. Perhaps the Spicers would appreciate fried trout for dinner.” Gus smiled at me and then added, “Sawyer will stay here with you.”
My heart danced and sent blood rushing joyously through me, before I reminded myself I must smother these flutterings, banish them to the dark part of my soul where so many secrets were nailed beneath desperate boards. Angus dug into his saddlebag and extracted an oval-shaped tin box, the size of his hand.
“Here, these are the hooks and line. Sawyer has a knife. All you need do is find a suitable branch.”
I rose and dried both hands on my skirt. My voice was admirably steady as I replied, “Thank you. Have we a stringer?”
“Nah, just use a bucket,” Boyd said, dragging Malcolm in a struggling headlock as they came up from the river. “I’m counting on you, sis, to catch us a pile of trout. Now that you’ve got me thinking about it an’ all.”
I giggled at his words and said, “I’ll do my best.”
Malcolm landed a solid punch on Boyd’s stomach and broke free, racing to his horse. He was mounted almost before I could blink and yelled, “Gus, Boyd, c’mon! We’ll race!”
Angus resettled his hat and said, “We’ll be back directly. The Spicers are camped less than a mile from here.”
“Lorie, you’re missing the excitement!” Malcolm yelped, as Aces pranced in semi-circles, just as restless as his rider.
Boyd lifted his hand in farewell and teased, “Well, we’ll expect supper when we return.”
“You know I can’t cook,” Sawyer said, from behind me, and Boyd laughed.
A minute later, less than that, we were alone together. Before I could turn around, Sawyer said, “I cut a length I think you’ll be able to use,” and then, with a hint of skepticism in his deep voice, “Do you truly know how to fish?”
I spun to face him and said, “I surely do. My brothers taught me.”
His eyebrows, shades darker than his golden hair, lifted slightly at the tone in my voice, which I hadn’t exactly intended, and humor touched his eyes. He said, “I was just making certain. No need to get ruffled. Here, take this and I’ll cut one for myself.”
I felt a smile nudge my lips at his words.
Ruffled, indeed
.
If only he knew. When my fingers were twitching with the urge to smooth the strand of hair that had come loose from where he’d moored it at the back of his neck, to tuck it gently behind his right ear. Instead I took the sapling he offered; it was roughly half-again my height, a perfect length for fishing.
He looked down at my hem and my bare, dirty feet, saying, “You’d best put on your boots.”
“But my blisters hurt so much yet,” I said, which was true, though I felt oddly contrary. “I’ll be careful.”
He looked back into my eyes and said, his tone lightly teasing me, “If you step on another splinter, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“I won’t,” I assured him, curling my toes into the grass.
He looked steadily into my eyes before turning and collecting a tin bucket from the ground, saying, “Well, let’s find a good spot.”
I followed him back to the swimming hole, clutching both my fishing pole and the tin of supplies, mindful of my hem. I studied him freely and with pleasure as he walked before me, perhaps five feet ahead, the sun dappling his broad back with leaf shadows, flickering in golden flashes over his long hair. I could see the hilt of his knife extending from the sheath on his trousers. When we reached the slight ridge above the rocky beach, he jumped gracefully and then turned and offered his hand to help me down the steep bank, like a true Tennessee gentleman. The sun accentuated the gold in his eyes. Instead of taking his hand, I passed the pole into it and then hitched my skirt just enough, jumping down beside him. The rocks hurt my feet, but I was not about to admit to this.
Again his eyes danced with humor, but he didn’t comment. Instead he indicated with my fishing pole a spot beneath an enormous draping willow tree. He said, “If you want to get started, I’ll be there directly.”
I took it back from him and made my way to the shade offered beneath the tree, opening the tin over my skirt once I’d sat down, dumping its contents there. I singled out a hook and a length of the coiled line. I didn’t look up as he approached, busy with unwinding the line. He sat, leaving a good two feet of proper distance between us, and tested the branch he’d cut for himself, holding it out over the water.
“May I use your knife?” I asked without looking up from my task, and he passed it to me wordlessly, hilt first. It was warm from his hand and I studied it carefully. It was not something from his time as a soldier, I was certain, as the handle was crafted from a section of deer antler, smoothed to a glossy, well-used sheen, and carved with initials:
SJD
. My heart panged as though struck with a hammer. Smoothing my thumb almost possessively over the letters of his name, I heard myself ask, “What does the ‘J’ stand for?”
He seemed slightly startled that I’d asked, taking a moment to reply. I kept my eyes on his knife as he finally said, “James is my middle name. After my daddy. He made that knife for me when I was just a boy.”
I nodded, using the sharp edge to make a small diagonal slit at the slender end of my branch, the part that had not been connected to the tree.
“And yours?” he asked me. I was so completely aware of him on my left side that I could hardly bear it, finding it difficult to look his way, but my eyes flashed to him at this question. He was sitting in his usual fashion, knees bent and arms around them, tapping the end of branch he’d just cut on the ground, watching me. His long-lashed eyes were so utterly beautiful. I wondered how many women had been given the privilege of seeing them at close range and found myself unutterably jealous of Eva. Were she to appear in front of me, I may well have leaped upon her again, and clawed her face.
I put the violent thought, with its nauseating reminders of Ginny’s place, firmly from me and replied, “Anne, after my mama’s mother.”
“And you’d brothers, you said. How many?” he asked next.
I looked back over the river as I pictured my blue-eyed brothers. The thought of them made my stomach ache with a sudden, uneasy roll. I said, “Two, Dalton and Jesse. They were older than me.”
“They were soldiers, like your father?” he asked.
I set his knife and my unfinished fishing pole carefully upon the earth between us and replied, “They were. They signed on with Daddy in Lee’s Army of Virginia, from the first. They were both killed at Sharpsburg.” I closed my eyes against the ancient ache of memory, before looking back at him and asking, “When did you join up?”
His eyes changed then, the expression in their depths turning inward, towards thought and memory and past sensation. His gaze shifted instinctively up and to the left.
“In late ’sixty-two. We joined the Army of Tennessee then, under Joe Wheeler, as cavalrymen,” he said, his voice very soft. He seemed to consider his reply carefully before he spoke. Finally, looking over the river, he said, “My brothers and I, and the Carters, believed we were protecting our home when we joined up. I knew of those who kept slaves, but we never did, nor the Carters. They farmed their ridge and worked the land themselves. The land was rich, but we stayed poor, though I could not have asked for a happier childhood, truly. I hold the memories of those days dearer than all others. All of us boys believed in defending our state, our homeland. We’d heard such tales of the northerners invading, the cruelty that followed in their wake. We thought it was the right course of action. We were fools, and greener than goddamn sawgrass.” He drew a meditative sigh before saying, “My daddy ran the livery stable in Suttonville all of my life. I grew up in that stable, along with my brothers, Ethan and Jeremiah. Eth and Jere were twins. Jesus, when I think back to the hell we raised as boys. My poor mama.” He was quiet for a spell, lost in thought, before continuing, “Ethan and Jere were born before I was even a year old. I think we were there in the stable, with my father, almost more than we were home. And Whistler was born there.”
His eyes were steady upon the running water, though I understood he saw it not. He was unreachable miles away, in his past. The county where he’d been raised had also been mine. He knew, then, the sweet scent of the bluegrass and the turpentine of the red pines, the hazy, ghost-mist mornings which the sun burned into clear blue-gold days that swung along like jeweled beads on a necklace. The iron-rich, rust-red roads and the loamy smell of the earth. The daily scent and sight and sound of many horses, the pang of a blacksmith’s hammer upon its anvil. Just by looking at him, my senses were likewise overwhelmed with the images, almost tangible in the air around us.
“How long have you had her?” I asked, studying his profile, unable to tear my eyes from him.
He said, “A long time. She was born the summer of ’sixty, and I chose her for mine from the start. I raised her up from a filly. She was born almost into my arms. She was the sweetest little thing in the whole world and Mama teased me for giving my heart away so young. She’s gotten me through some of the hardest times in my life.” His deep voice was soft with the memory, “I named her Whistler because she loved it when I’d whistle to her. Any old tune, but she loved ‘O Susanna’ the best. She still does.”
He stopped himself abruptly and at last met my gaze. My heart turned over upon itself, swirling heat all through me. I stared at him and was terrified I would surrender to my need to touch him as he spoke so tenderly of his horse, his past. I was near ill with longing and I babbled a little as I said, “I grew up with horses as well. I love them. I learned how to ride when I was just a girl, though I wasn’t allowed to do heavy work. Daddy and my brothers took care of the smithing.”
Sawyer said, “I knew your father. He served in Gus’s brigade for a time, but I recall him best from back home. He bought and sold horses with my father.”
“You remember him from then?” I asked wistfully, thinking of my father, with his steady hands and kind blue eyes; my daddy, who had loved me so. At least I had once been loved that way, knew that such love existed. I’d learned since that very few people harbored such cherished memories.
He nodded. “I do. You must have been to Suttonville, as a girl.”
“I was. Mama shopped for dry goods there.”
His brows drew slightly together and he said quietly, “Lorie, may I ask you something?”
When he spoke my name that way, I felt I would do anything he requested. I nodded, not trusting my voice. His eyes were somber as he wondered softly, “Why were you so far from home?”
I looked away, instinctively, trying to keep the sudden tears in my eyes contained. He was at once contrite, saying, “Please, I don’t mean to—”
“No, it’s all right,” I interrupted. Of course he wondered. I lifted my gaze to the tree limbs touching their fingertips together above our heads as I drew a breath and then said, “Daddy survived until near the end of the War, though Dalton and Jesse were killed within a year of leaving home. Mama nearly died after news of them. Not being able to bury them properly. And then after Daddy, she took to sitting in her rocker, day after day. I should have known. I should have tried harder to save her.” I closed my eyes, seeing my lovely mother grow gray and frail before my horrified, helpless gaze. The sun was reddish and unpleasant on the backs of my eyelids as I recalled a time I had spent so much emotional effort keeping locked away. I said, “But she died that summer, in ’sixty-five.”
“How old were you?” he asked quietly.
“I had just turned fifteen,” I said, arms wrapped almost double around myself; I had moved into that position unconsciously and loosened my hold a little.
“And she was all you had left,” he concluded, his voice low.
I nodded and said, “A family, our neighbors, took me in for a time, but I ended up being sent with another family who was bound for St. Louis. She was kind, but he…”
I gulped a little as I recalled Jim Foster’s face. To banish it from my mind, I looked at Sawyer’s face; he too had abandoned his fishing pole and sat with right arm braced on his bent knees, his fisted left hand pressed against his mouth, as one listening intently. His eyes were so very serious upon mine and I gathered myself to whisper, “He bet me in a card game, and lost, and G-Ginny bought me from him.” I stuttered over her name, embarrassing myself, but went on, “And she considered me her property after that. I should…I should have run away from her, I should have tried harder…” I faltered to silence and pressed my own knuckles to my mouth, afraid I might start weeping. And I didn’t want that.
Sawyer’s eyes were so intense upon me that my heart jolted against my ribs. He lowered his fist and asked, his voice low and almost harsh, “He
sold
you? A young girl?”
I nodded, barely perceptibly.
“Jesus,” he said, his eyes flashing fire into mine, anger at the knowledge, and a tiny part of me felt vindicated, that someone else recognized the atrocity of what Jim Foster had done to me. “And you hadn’t…you hadn’t ever…” and then he stopped instantly and said, “My mama would take a strap to me for asking such a thing, Lorie, please forgive me.”
“I hadn’t,” I confirmed woodenly.
His eyes were unutterably pained and he said, “I’m so sorry.” And then, “We were home to Suttonville by then, by ’sixty-five, just miles from you.”
“It seems strange to think of it that way,” I whispered. “I’ve always wondered what became of our ranch, all of our things.”
“Sometimes it’s better not to know,” he said. “Our home was burned nearly to the ground, my daddy’s livery stable too, most of our tack and equipment stolen. When I came home from the War, I tell you I thought that my heart had turned to dust. I thought I would never feel a thing again after I found my family dead, after I saw what had become of our home. For a time I thought perhaps I could start the business up again, but I spent my nights and most of my days drinking. I’m ashamed of that now, the drinking, but it was as though the War itself had seeped into my very soul, Lorie, waking or sleeping I thought of it. I couldn’t sleep for the nightmares. I know the things I saw will never be fully gone from my memory, though I pray with time they may fade.”